Googly Eyes and Picnics

 

 I started off this week by adding googly eyes everywhere.  Its quite amazing how ridiculously cute they can make anything.  They have increased my love for my previously normal cellphone

 a hundred fold. 

You may have noticed my lack of pictures of the children. Problematically, they hate having pictures taken of them, but Jose was quite happy with the one with my hat.  He allowed me to keep it. My friend Mati left to work as a chef on a cruise ship, and we make meatballs for a goodbye dinner before he left, delicious. Take note of my John Deere apron.

 In my opinion, picnicking is an art form that I have mastered.  Let me specify, cheap picnicking is an art form I have mastered. only three items are required, four if you want to get Fancy.

1. Nutella

2. Bananas

3. Baguette

(4). 2 euro Red Wine

When I travelled Europe for 9 months two years ago, I can safely tell you that this constituted about half of my diet. Yum! Today was a lovely day, I picnicked in beautiful Retiro Park with a number of other au pairs, and met some new people!  There were an incredible number of Finnish au pairs, considering the population of Finland is about 5 million. We then rented some boats, and went out on the small lake in the park. A lovely Saturday. 

We made quite a sight as a bunch of foreign young women

Retiro Park

I really love the colors of this building. Europe!

Castillos

Its a three day weekend here in Spain, Friday was Hispania day, celebrating Columbus discovering America.  Like Columbus day in the US, its not celebrated much, but everyone gets the day off which is nice, there is also a military parade, but I didn't make it to that.  Actually, we tried, but I discovered that riding a motorcycle in the rain is extremely exciting only for

the first 10 minutes while you can still feel your fingers.  Last weekend I visited the countryside!  Its not to far from here, we went by car and visited a number of castles.  Let me tell you, castles here are about a dime a dozen,  you can hardly turn a corner and there will be some 2000 year old fort.  Jeepers.  It was fantastic to get out for a while, and the countryside is lovely here.  

There are acres and acres of olive trees, which are beautiful and sculptural, also crocuses grow wild everywhere! They are beautiful flowers. These are the flowers whose stigmas are used to make saffron, the most expensive spice. I didn't pick any to roast, for you are supposed to gather in the morning, when its the least oily, then you have to dry it and its allowed to ferment slightly.  I would like to try to make it sometime. 

By this castle there were a dozen 500 year old windmills that they used to make flour.  In Don Quixote he thinks that windmills are enemy nights, and he attacks them. 

I made Spanish Tortilla!

Mati in a Castle

  I have made plans to go to Oslo for 4 days!  Its relatively easy to travel within Europe, and I want to take advantage of the opportunity while I can!  I have a friend studying in Norway, another who lives in Oslo, and hopefully I will be able to visit a few of our distant relatives.  I am also looking forward to the cold.  Who knew I would miss it so much?  When it rained yesterday I was over the moon.  Its October, but it doesn't feel like it here.        

Parks and Squid!

 Today I drove the car 6 times, I repeat, 6 times, without stalling.  !  I think I deserve chocolate con churros tomorrow for that.  Churros have quickly become my reward for just about everything. 

   In other news I tried squid this morning! Way better than I expected.  My friend Mati and I explored the botanical gardens, and concluded all of the prettiest plants are from japan.  

Mati at the Botanical Gardens

 I didn't have classes for a couple of days so I got to do some exploring.  I went to Casa del Campo, Madrid's enormous park.  Its huge.  6.6 square miles. 

It used to be the royal hunting grounds and then was converted to an urban park.  This provided a much-needed break from the endless noise of traffic that most people are oblivious to, but it drives me insane. 

Casa del Campo

Madrid has a good number of really great parks, and I spend lots of time in them.  During the nights the parks are a very very popular place to meet up with friends and get drunk on (mostly)cheap wine mixed with cola. They call this tradition Botellon. You get drunk here first, then go to discos, etc. There is no end to the nightlife here.  Incredible.  Some friends and I tried to go to a techno party the other night, but it was already full with 10,000 people.  No joke.  There was another 5,000 partying outside the club. 

I want to live here!  Gardener's shack in one of the gardens

 

 Spain is going through a unbalanced time, unemployment is very high (25%), the national banks need to be bailed out, and the government itself may  need to ask the EU to bail them out as well.  There is a rather right-wing government at the moment, and to budget they are trimming many social services.  Due to many of these factors, there have been many protests around the congress lately, some becoming violent.  Students and young people (whose unemployment is at about 50%) have been protesting off and on for quite a while. There are also metro strikes often, the three weeks I've been here there have been 4 separate days of metro strikes.  Lots of unrest, and its very apparent here.  

 

Last but not least!  This one is a disco.

 

 

Getting Oriented?

Hello one and all!

Did you know that there is no tooth fairy here?  Instead they have a tooth mouse, Ratoncito Perez.  Makes a lot more sense to me.

This is the view I regularly wake up to, too bad about the crane...

I have been in Madrid for about two weeks now, and I am quite a bit more settled in.  I have a good idea of what my days look like and I'll give you the lowdown. I did this in Spanish Class yesterday, so I am basking in the ease of English.

One of the many places I can spend my morning.  

Weekdays I wake up, get ready, and take the kids to school at 8:30.  I drive them to school. In a manual car.  In the city.  This is an extremely daunting task for me as I am not very practiced in both driving manual, and driving with lots of traffic.  Nebraska was a bit different.  I am happily down to an average of two stalls a day, but when I began, oy.  I then take the metro to the city center, and read or explore until class at 10:30.  My classes are at the very center of everything, so there is a lot to discover.  I have about an hour of Spanish a day, then after I have some time to wander about, meet up with folks, go to a cafe, until I go back to pick up the boys at 1:30.  We have a two hour break for lunch, etc, then they go back to school for a couple of hours.  I help with their homework, and their English especially. 

Tintin is everywhere!

  Afterward, sometimes I go to the city and meet up with friends, or we play futbol (they are about 10x better than I)  I have the weekends off, and so far I have stayed in Madrid, where there is surely enough to entertain someone for a lifetime, but in the future I hope to travel around Spain.  Madrid is smack dab in the center of Spain,  they planned it that way.  Convenient!

Now let me indulge in telling you about one of the greatest things that the Spanish have contributed to human race.  They are called Chocolate con Churros.  It is yummy fried sweet stuff that you DIP IN thick hot chocolate.  Holy cow. Can it get any better than this?  Chocolate and fried stuff?  Wow.  This is typically a breakfast  treat here, and traditionally they especially eat it on the morning after new years.  Wow. Its amazing and delicious. My mouth waters just thinking about it. The most famous place here to eat chocolate con churros is the San Gines Chocolaterie.  Its only open at night, which will tell you something about the Madrid nightlife, but that's a whole other story.   

Not to be outdone by the fashionable Nebraska, just a couple of streets away we have Iowa!

Good Golly, I'm living in Spain.

The road goes ever on and on...

Well!  This is my blog.  About living in Madrid as an Au Pair.  I'll just go at it then.

My journey started at 4 in the morning at a somewhat sketchy hotel in Tacoma.  I had one and a half days of airplane travel ahead of me.  For some crazy reason, I thought it would be cheaper to fly to London first and then Madrid, in the end it was about the same, though I had 10 more hours of travel.  I got through my three flights and hours and hours of waiting in the airport without a hitch.  Thank god for those duty-free stores with loads of perfume and makeup for me to play with.  I arrived in Madrid at 10:30 the next evening, exhausted and somewhat bedraggled, for in two of my three flights I was stuck on the window side of a old, large, and grumpy couple.   

Carmen (the mother) and the two kids I am to take care of, Jose(10) and Felipe(12), were there to welcome me.  The family is lovely, the father, Felipe, is a surgeon, and Carmen is a family physician.  I'm set for medical emergencies.  They live in a large house in the north part of central Madrid, and the house has all marble floors.  Woah.  All marble floors.  It floored me.  

I have my own mini-suite, complete with bathroom.  And marble floors.  These are especially important because marble is 11 degrees F at room temperature.  The rumors are true.  Its hot here.  Siesta is a survival skill.  I made the mistake of walking to the park at about 3:30 yesterday, and it was a ghost town.  For good reason, I did not stay 2 minutes it was so hot. 

I haven't started Spanish classes yet, and the boys haven't started school, so things are quite relaxed until Tuesday.  I am well settled in, and have had  a chance to explore the city a little, this morning we went to the Sunday Market at El Rastro. Its huge and glorious, I didn't get pickpocketed.  It was at this market where I tried something that I never thought I would.  Caracoles.  Snails.  Oh boy.  Carmen assured me this was the best restaraunt to eat them, and that they were "typical espanish".  Well, I did it.  I at 4 snails.  Suprisingly, they tasted good, but I couldn't quite get past the idea.  I'll have to work on that.  

  Everyone thought I was going to Madrid. Nope!  Living in good 'ol Nebraska.